[deergomoo]

Good read. Interesting that the author’s takeaway is that folks consider Digg v4 to be a catastrophic launch because of the myriad technical issues.

I don’t even remember there being technical issues, I just remember logging in one day to find a website I enjoyed replaced with a bunch of crap I wasn’t interested in.

[what-the-grump]

Digg was Digg, then V4 launched, and it was no longer Digg. It was really that simple, oh hey I should check Digg maybe there is something interesting went to oh hey I need to find something else to check because Digg is stale, the new UI had much lower information density, coupled with less content meant that there was no reason to go back if you could find a faster feed.

New stuff like reddit, insta, twitter, simply took over filling the urge to hit f5 for latest content.

[johnwalkr]

Plus it literally didn't load half the time.

[Seanambers]

Yeah, the technical issues weren't that crazy from the user perspective. The change of features were though. It was a totally different site, people left because the core functionality of the site disappeared over night.

Edit - makes me wonder if they used the site themselves.

[mustacheemperor]

It’s interesting that as users, we think of v4 as this pivotal moment when the platform changed forever - but the article’s author seems to think of it more as the inflection point of ongoing problems that had built up for a while.

Especially with a high profile implosion like this, it’s really interesting to contrast our experience in the userbase to an internal perspective.

>Digg V4 is sometimes referenced as an example of a catastrophic launch, with an implied lesson that we shouldn’t have launched it. At one point, I used to agree, but these days I think we made the right decision to launch. Our traffic was significantly down, we were losing a bunch of money each month, we had recently raised money and knew we couldn’t easily raise more. If we’d had the choice between launching something great and something awful, we’d have preferred to launch something great, but instead we had the choice of taking one last swing or turning in our bat quietly.

[conradfr]

That's my recollection of it. Just one day the content was not interesting anymore and felt certainly more gamed than before, which they wanted to combat as per this blog post.

I'm surprised the conclusion is not that they learn to never do a full rewrite of a social product again.

[broknbottle]

This so much. I remember visiting digg after v4 launch and it felt like a totally different site. At the time I remember looking for site that filled void and offered similar content but wasn’t so focused e.g. slashdot and I came upon reddit

[hn_throwaway_99]

Glad to see this as the top comment. I was a "Digg refugee" to Reddit, and I do remember a lot of outages with V4, but just like you, I remember thinking more clearly "Why would I wait a long time for this page to load when all that comes back is spam." It was the most useless, uninteresting set of basically ads that I could think of. Imagine if Reddit had no interesting user submitted stories but was instead 100% of some of their worst ads that try to use "Reddit meme language". It was pathetic and sad.

[thisismyhna]

Yeap, this was definitely the point where many of us jumped over to Reddit. I remember hating Reddit's interface but it was the lesser evil.

[patwolf]

I remember a growing frustration before the v4 launch. Early on it seemed to be an aggregator for fun stuff on the internet, but over time it become more and more political. The v4 launch was the last straw that convinced me to switch to Reddit.

Reddit at the time felt lighthearted and fun. I think I read somewhere that a lot of the comments were being written in-house, which makes sense in retrospect. For example, someone would leave a comment like "Is this the real life?", and then the entire lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody would appear line-by-line as comments without missing a beat. It seems improbable that a bunch of strangers could have done that perfectly.

While there are some parallels between Digg v4 and what's going on with Reddit today, I think predictions of its death are greatly exaggerated. However, I would be happy to see something else take its place.

[unsupp0rted]

This is why I’m excited for the Reddit third party apps change.

In a few years nobody will remember that this is what precipitated the fall of Reddit. It’s already turned into an echo-chamber of nonsense, ruled by all-powerful mods to whom every user is a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy.

Even the smaller subs catch the contagion year over year.

I’ve been a Redditor since before the narwhal baconed at midnight. I miss the Reddit that was good.

I’m excited to see what replaces it.

[afavour]

I’ve also been a Redditor for well over a decade. While I miss the days when it was a smaller niche site (before the Digg implosion it was basically a nerdier, smaller Digg) I still use and enjoy the site plenty today.

I have never been accused of being a racist transphobe whatever, if that’s your number one issue with the site maybe some inward reflection is in order? Just don’t get involved in political flamewars, they serve absolutely no purpose for anyone involved.

[psygn89]

I haven't been called that either, but I know what he means... many of Reddit's bigger community comment section basically seems to devolve into politics or racial issues even if it was a photo of a cute kitten. Often you'll basically see the comment section locked after it runs that course. The old reddit wasn't like that unless you visited political subreddits.

[babypuncher]

I think it's a product of some reddit communities becoming too big to effectively moderate.

I mostly stick with smaller, non-default subs and don't really run into this problem anymore.

[paulddraper]

Yes, smaller subs do not have this issue.

[paisawalla]

> I have never been accused of being a racist transphobe whatever, if that’s your number one issue with the site maybe some inward reflection is in order

Perhaps you simply haven't encountered the kind of person who, at the vaguest sense of an opportunity to claim the title of Most Moral Person, will leap up to condescend you based on the most uncharitable and motivated reading of your words.

[mynameisvlad]

If one person calls you an asshole, then they might be an asshole. If everyone calls you an asshole, then some inward reflection is in order because you're likely coming off as an asshole.

If it happens again and again, in different circles with different people, like GP indicates happens, then maybe, just maybe it's not everyone else that's the problem.

[raxxorraxor]

That is not really good advice. There are frequent mobs that believe others to be assholes. For that matter, I believe you almost always qualify for that if you form that strong opinions about someone from internet comments because that directly reflects on your narrow perspective and you willingness to act on insufficient information.

If I think AITA subs and similar communities really aren't very tolerant people at all. Sure, there are people that like to provoke, but I think some subs are just some form of merger of similar people believing themselves to be oh so generous in their judgmentality but in reality are pretty toxic by almost all standards.

[mynameisvlad]

It’s almost as if I said

> in different circles with different people, like GP indicates happens

But you just chose to ignore it and soldier on with your rambling diatribe.

If people in completely different subs like StarTrek and CanadaCoronavirus and god knows how many others all say someone is an asshole, then the person is just a fucking asshole. That’s all there is to it.

It’s not some big conspiracy caused by “merging of subs” or whatever other BS you and your friends come up with to justify your shitty behavior.

Considering this thread is no longer on the front page and you somehow chose to reply to all my comments and their sibling threads in here, I’m just going to go on a limb to say you’re probably a sock puppet for someone else here. Next time, just use your main account.

[nailer]

I feel the implication is it only happens on Reddit so therefore it’s Reddit that is out of touch.

[unsupp0rted]

Exactly. I’m not being called “an asshole”, even on Reddit: I’m being called racist, transphobic, homophobic, etc

And only on Reddit.

In real life, and in other online communities (e.g. I’m a member of a “DINK” Facebook group for people without kids), I haven’t had this problem.

I haven’t gotten into flame wars with ad-hominems in recent memory either.

People are a lot less eager to play the “you’re vaguely problematic” card outside Reddit.

[mynameisvlad]

https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/am-i-so-out-of-touch

Reddit is not one person, you understand that right?

If multiple people on different parts of Reddit are telling you you’re an asshole— something I explicitly called out— then Occam’s Razor says that you are, in fact, the asshole.

[paisawalla]

The underlying motivation in these sorts of exchanges is rarely a desire for a global increase of genuine self-examination, but more often to exploit an opportunity for ostentatious preening. We know this because your logic can be trivially inverted to point the mirror in the reverse direction. So, reflection being what it is, if self-examination were the true goal, one imagines that those advocating it would at least show first that they had done it themselves.

[mynameisvlad]

The underlying motivation is to have assholes take a closer look at themselves instead of continuously blaming those around them for what ultimately is the result of their own actions.

If this struck such a nerve with you, then you may want to take a step back and re-evaluate why you're so deeply triggered by people advocating for introspection instead of deflection.

It's pretty clear from your comment you won't, but that's a separate issue.

[david38]

The old “if the issue doesn’t affect me, it’s probably something with you.”

[wlesieutre]

The person they're replying to was the one who said "every user" so I'm not going to fault them for saying "hasn't been my experience"

I've not run into that either and I've been on reddit since before digg v4

[unsupp0rted]

I got banned from /r/CanadaCoronavirus for saying at the time we didn't yet know how many doses and on what schedule of the vaccine would be needed.

Banned. That's anti-vaxx propaganda on my part, evidently.

I messaged the mods to explain that I was triple-vaxxed and what I said was not only factually correct, it wasn't even controversial.

The mods patiently replied that anti-vaxx trolls like me will be reported to reddit to have my entire account banned "for harassment" if I contact them again.

What inward reflection do I need? This is just one of myriad examples with mods who don't actually read or process the content about which they're banning people.

[strunz]

None of that sounds like you were called a "racist transphobe nazi homophobe" like you originally said. Funny how you picked an example of something to frame yourself as correct in the most "scientific" way possible instead.

[unsupp0rted]

I could have added antivaxx or generically “denying The Science” to my list of -ist terms, I suppose.

[btreecat]

That doesn't sound like the full story.

[brightball]

Based on my experience, that probably is the full story.

[unsupp0rted]

What else can I add? You've seen my interactions here.

Does it seem to you like the kind of person you’re interacting with is reasonable here but unreasonable to the point of group toxicity elsewhere? Or that I'm unreasonable here?

[dghlsakjg]

Yes.

Your initial comment here was unsupported by real world examples, and used a lot of rage-bait buzzwords.

When asked to put up a concrete example, no-one called you a fascist/nazi/transphobe in the example. They banned you for, according to you, "just asking questions" on a country specific coronavirus subreddit.

Your tone comes off as "I'm right, they're wrong. I'm the victim here!"

[jnwatson]

The full story is that this was the 100th similar interaction the mod had that week and they were short on patience.

[josefx]

Got praised on one sub for reporting a bot and banned from another for it (throwing around baseless accusations!!).

Some mods have a hair trigger on that ban hammer.

[spookthesunset]

> That doesn't sound like the full story.

Nope. That is it. Many, many subs would outright ban you if you dared to question the narrative or posted to a "misinformation" subreddit like /r/lockdownskepticism. It was pathetic, honestly. God forbid anybody disagree with what society chose to do with covid....

[mvdtnz]

Same thing was happening in the New Zealand for some time.

[afavour]

Yeah, that example does sound bad. In the ideal world I’d be curious to hear the mod’s perspective: it’s possible to be perceived as a troll even when you’re stating true facts, depending on context and tone.

That’s kind of what I mean about inward reflection. If you find yourself on the receiving end of modding after stating entirely true and relevant facts… yes, maybe the mods are out of control. But maybe the impression you’re giving off while stating truth still leaves a sour taste. If you find yourself fielding accusations of being antivaxx and being racist and being a transphobe, etc etc, all in different subs with different mods then there’s only a few commonalities left. I’m not saying you did deserve any of this, I don’t have the evidence to, just that it’s something worth pondering.

[unsupp0rted]

The commonality could be that I am all those things, or the commonality could be that Reddit is pathologically sensitive to all those things.

My claim is the latter: it's a Reddit auto-immune disease that was hardly present in the early days and is now impossible to miss after years of gradual decline.

[HelloMcFly]

Occam's Razor suggests the former. Here is a perfunctory "I don't know you" - nothing below may be applicable.

There are power-hungry mods, no doubt. They can be politically oriented in either direction, or sometimes just like to be the monarch. But I've been around reddit for over 15 years now, and in my view if you're regularly being accused of being toxic, I'm inclined to believe that you're the cause. And it may not be due to the factual nature of your posts, but the manner in which you share them.

Again, I don't know you, and my experience certainly can't generalize to everyone else. I was a mod for about six months, hated it, but that gave me all the insight I need into how dishonest (or possibly not at all self-aware) people can be when recounting how they were "wronged."

[Takennickname]

My friend. Of course you don't know what he is talking about. When you ask a fish what is water? It doesn't know. It was surrounded by it it's whole life.

When you ask a reddit mod what is bias? It doesn't know. It was surrounded by it its whole life.

[btreecat]

As someone who used to mod, jfc you're clearly one of the folks who was a problem if that's your opening position.

I know that had you stepped up to help out one of your favorite subs, you'd have a different lense. You comment is v clearly just ignorant.

[pdntspa]

I have to agree with GP, I am part of several subreddits where the moderators clearly enjoy being kings of their precious little fiefdom. Some of these folks are downright fascists, and the only way to fix it is to start a new subreddit or try appeal to reddit staff

Maybe the burden of moderation makes them this way, I don't know. But reddit is worse off with them.

[alienthrowaway]

Edit: this comment is descriptive, not prescriptive

If you have ever moderated a subreddit you'd understand why mods wind up with heavy handed approaches.

Even moderately sized subreddits are a lot of work, especially of a post gets to the front page. You can't have gourmet experiences at fast-food scale. When you have a long list of reports to go through, and you have been moderating long-enough, your decisions are based on heuristics rather than nuanced explanation or checking the post history of some (non-subscribed guest) snowflake Redditor who think their spicy take is insightful and/or you're taking away their 1A rights when they haven't bothered to read the rules of the subreddit they are commenting in. Subreddits are not a townsquare open to all-comers, they are very large clubhouses with distinct rules and norms - mods exist to enforce those rules.

There's no time for - nor an upside to splitting hairs on whether a commenter is a transphobic nazi[1] or merely matches the archetype. When modding, false positives are vastly preferable to false negatives since mods value their time more than the individual commenters who get caught up, and I don't see this changing even if you were to become the mod

1. Or is a "woke brigader" on the conservative subreddits.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

False positives are always preferable to the person who gets to make them.

They're somewhat less so to those who end up being the false positives.

If your hobby's main forum on the internet dried up and withered away 12 years ago because the only place to discuss it is reddit, then it's not as if such a person can just go elsewhere. You have a monopoly on the conversation and you're clearly not interested in justice anywhere near as much as you're interested in kicking out people you just don't like well enough to care about justice for them.

[jnwatson]

I think Musk learned the hard way how hard it is to strike the right balance.

Anybody that thinks Reddit is fascist should spend 60 days moderating a popular sub. Your attitude might change.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t mods with power trips. Reddit has essentially outsourced their trust and safety department. It isn’t going to be perfect.

[mananaysiempre]

> Anybody that thinks Reddit is fascist should spend 60 days moderating a popular sub.

I have little in the way of opinions about Reddit, but this strikes me as the wrong approach on general grounds.

It might be true that anyone who spends time running a subreddit will change their mind about moderation. However, the only point of a subreddit is for people to talk to each other and to read what others are talking about; moderation is nothing but incidental overhead. That doesn’t mean it’s easy or unimportant, but it does mean that the burden is on the moderators to prove themselves reasonable to participants who don’t and shouldn’t have to, by default, understand their work going in.

There can be different approaches to that, and in some of them the participants will come to understand and care about how moderation works—I’m not saying that they shouldn’t. But I am saying that if they don’t see why they should but the moderators wanted them to, generally speaking it’s the moderators who failed.

There is no natural law that says that there’ll always be a way to succeed, though. Perhaps in some communities, in some political environments, etc. there just can’t be a good discussion forum. In such cases, maybe it really are the users who suck. But the fact remains that if users get annoyed about the moderation and leave, then the moderators have built a forum that’s wrong for those users.

(This is of course the standard argument against every instance of “the users just don’t understand how complex the backoffice is” ever. But this instance might look a bit unfamilliar because it doesn’t involve computers.)

[ryandrake]

I briefly modded an old phpBB forum (remember those?) and therefore have sympathy for mods. The job is thankless, and the amount of crap that you need to mod is unending. And this was for a tiny hobby forum, not the vast sewage of Reddit. I'm talking spam, flamewars, spam, harassment, nazis, spam, porn, spam, spam, bigotry, and spam. I can't imagine how hard it would be on a forum with a user base as giant and interconnected as Reddit.

The balance seems impossible. If your moderation is "light touch" the forum ends up like 4chan. If your moderation is heavy handed, you're a power-tripper control freak lording over your site. You can't win.

I don't know how dang does it here. He's some kind of wizard.

[prions]

How many times does the hard libertarian view on forums have to be debunked until people stop trying to pitch it as a serious solution?

Even 4chan has stronger moderation than what you advocate

[ncallaway]

> This is of course the standard argument against every instance of “the users just don’t understand how complex the backoffice is” ever

Except in this case the ones in the “back office” are volunteers and not staff.

I’m amenable to your argument in most other contexts. But it strikes me as an awful argument to apply to volunteers.

In that context, if you don’t like it then you have to step up and do it yourself. If someone is doing work for free, you don’t get to complain about the quality. Instead, you pick up a broom and do the sweeping yourself.

Which isn’t to say that Reddit mods are beyond question or reproach, but if there’s a concern shared by all moderators, it strikes me as wrong to say “that’s a backoffice issue”. If you don’t like it, go back into the office.

[jredwards]

Moderation is an incredibly difficult task and almost impossible to get right. There are subs with better mods and worse mods. But lack of moderation is the best way to ensure that a platform becomes absolute garbage as quickly as possible.

[bwat49]

see: Voat

[sdwr]

Agree here. The worst moderators are the most visible - it's a power position. Anyone with tact, humility or a life will lie low and not exploit it.

The bright line for me is whether they can handle direct criticism. Everything else is window dressing - is your ego strong enough to handle someone saying they don't like you? If not, you won't make good decisions.

[roqi]

> I have to agree with GP, I am part of several subreddits where the moderators clearly enjoy being kings of their precious little fiefdom.

You never used IRC, have you?

[torstenvl]

GP expressed an opinion about abusive moderators.

Your response is to disagree with him, identify yourself as a moderator, and then... be abusive?

How exactly did you think that profanity and personal attacks were going to help make your point?

[stronglikedan]

Unfortunately, GP is more correct than incorrect in their opening position. And that's partally to blame for the fall of what was a once great community, so it's relevant to point that out.

[nailer]

> jfc you're clearly one of the folks who was a problem if that's your opening position

I don’t think “jesus fucking Christ” complies with the HN guidelines, but anyway:

I was recently banned and accused of secretly being a Russian spy by the moderators of a politics subreddit, for my liberal, but not far left views. I am active on at least two subreddits of invading Russian soldiers dying so I would’ve thought it would have been clear that I dislike the Russian government.

[unsupp0rted]

Case in point

[b59831]

> As someone who used to mod ...

I'm pretty sure you were the problem

[btreecat]

I am certain the SPAM, low quality tooling, and shitty users were the problems. There is no pleasing everyone sure, but there is also no winning even accepting most folks, like yourself, not only won't understand but don't want to, when mixed with the barrage of "can I shill my junk here?"

[roqi]

> I'm pretty sure you were the problem

What problem is that?

Your comment reads like a puerile "no u" and adds nothing to the discussion. It's quite ironic given the topic.

[adamrezich]

"that's just what a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy would say!", basically?

[slg]

You may be joking, but the specifics insults there are indicative of a certain worldview. OP only used words that would come from a small percentage of the population and insults that wouldn't be relevant on most subreddits.

For example, these wouldn't be the insults you would here from anyone who qualifies as centrist or anything further right unless you are legitimately doing something wrong. There are also plenty of more conservative subreddits with awful mods too that would never use those insults. And if someone calls you a "transphobe" on some niche gardening subreddit, odds are you are doing something obnoxious and off topic that would upset the mods regardless of whether you are actually a transphobe.

Combine that all together and it starts to sound like OP is one of those people who is "running into assholes all day" without ever questioning whether that is any indication of their own behavior.

[jstarfish]

> And if someone calls you a "transphobe" on some niche gardening subreddit, odds are you are doing something obnoxious and off topic that would upset the mods regardless of whether you are actually a transphobe.

Gaslighting in action.

To earn the Transphobe badge, all you have to do is complain about anyone else bringing up the subject of trans-anything on a niche gardening subreddit. Or refuse to boycott Harry Potter.

You're very quick to denounce this guy as an asshole "doing something wrong" based on absolutely no material information-- just a bunch of assumptions and speculation. Hardly an honest assessment on your part.

[OGWhales]

I don’t think gaslighting is the right word, it’s speculation.

In my experience on reddit, most of the time people heavily complain about how awful mods are it ends up being that person was actually just an asshole.

I agree that mods can be an issue and many are power hungry weirdos. I’ve been on reddit over a decade and have dealt with them plenty. My solution to dealing with subs run by bad moderators is unsubscribing/filtering them, as the content is typically of poor quality anyway and it’s usually a giant echo chamber. If that solution doesn’t work and you are constantly running into problem mods, it’s more likely that you are the problem or maybe you are seeking out communities where it's very likely to be ran by bad, heavily political moderators.

The comment in question above does seem like the typical comment you see on reddit, where when you look at their post history you realize they totally deserved it. If that’s actually the case for this person, I can’t say, I agree there isn’t enough info. But I can say I’m not surprised people are quick to assume that’s the case, cause it definitely reminds me of those kinds of comments where that is the case.

[slg]

>To earn the Transphobe badge, all you have to do is complain about anyone else bringing up the subject of trans-anything on a niche gardening subreddit. Or refuse to boycott Harry Potter.

Yes, this is the "obnoxious and off topic" behavior I was talking about. The mods of a niche gardening subreddit likely don't want to moderate a debate about your refusal to boycott Harry Potter.

[unsupp0rted]

Agreed and thank you. The Transphobe badge is the easiest one to earn at the moment, and I've earned it multiple times in Star Trek subs, even though I have no problem with the existence of trans people in theory, in sci fi stories, or in my daily life.

For instance, I recently earned the badge by saying the Dax character on DS9 isn't "a trans person"... she's an alien with a symbiote, that has lived 7 lives and doesn't much care which gender of body it inhabits per se, or whom its host is going around kissing.

I'm providing plenty of content here in my comments based on which to either denounce me as an asshole or to agree that I'm not one.

[babypuncher]

If you are starting fights about boycotting Harry Potter in my niche gardening subreddit, you are going to get in trouble, regardless of what side of the argument you are on. It's totally off-topic.

Many people come to niche subreddits specifically to get away from all the divisive political rhetoric that has infected all other corners of the internet.

[specialist]

Another option is descretion. Why say anything at all? Especially knowing that it'll just keep the slap fight going?

[specialist]

> the specifics insults there are indicative of a certain worldview

If it walks like a duck...

A partial defense is the reactionaries are quite good at mainstreaming their blather. For example, a few of us fell for Haidt's moral foundations nonsense, if only briefly.

[echelon]

I've been banned from multiple subreddits for describing stock-based compensation, for talking about AI, for defending trans people, and for worrying about crime in my city.

Reddit's moderation system is exactly the kind of world I don't want to live in.

[nonethewiser]

Can you elaborate how you “know” this? Or why you think it? It just looks like you’re triggered.

[marginalia_nu]

I think quality contributors have been evaporating from Reddit for a fairly long time in a dead sea fashion, leaving a place that's effectively inhospitable.

I left in 2018 or there-around. Probably stayed too long, in retrospect. 10+ year account, moderated multiple subreddits and a pillar of the community type figure in a few others.

On some level it felt like each election cycle dug deeper trenches until the entire website looked like the battle of Verdun. This wasn't exclusively an American phenomenon either. The same thing happened on several national subreddits.

I also got the sense that the reddit members cultivated a sort of creeping depression that was really allowed to fester on some subreddits essentially all about exchanging thoughts of hopelessness and doom. This was before Covid. I can't imagine it got better those years. Granted, Reddit was wallowing in "forever alone"-memes even 15 years ago, but it feels like the darkness of that abyss got darker as the years passed.

I've looked back a few times but I've immediately turned heel as I saw what a toxic dumpster fire it's turned into. Like it isn't as obvious if you've been in it, but jesus f christ on pogo stick is it ever clear to see when you've been away for a couple of years.

[whyenot]

I’ve been using Reddit for 14+ years and while the site has changed, mostly for the worse, in the past few years.

“It’s already turned into an echo-chamber of nonsense, ruled by all-powerful mods to whom every user is a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy.”

Moderators (excepting automod) are human, and like all of us they sometimes make mistakes, some may have biases or having a bad day. I have not seen what you are describing.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Sometimes groups of people making occasional mistakes, none of which are related to any other.

And sometimes groups tend to become pathological, such that no one joining the group is just "someone making occasional mistakes". Groups become like that for various reasons, but one of the qualities that seems most problematic tends to be "authority with minimal or no effective oversight".

This is why most police departments are just cesspits of anti-human torment and oppression. If reddit mods aren't murdering people, I'd chalk that up to the fact that they aren't given sidearms, fetters, and a mandate to patrol the streets.

> I have not seen what you are describing.

Cops never see anything worrisome either. You know, until some 11 yr old is shot in his own home after putting his hands up.

Reddit mods probably have it better in that reporters don't really go out of their way to put their abuses in the headlines.

[kristiandupont]

>every user is a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy.

Nobody on Reddit has called me any of those things.

[oh_sigh]

I literally once posted on T_D back in 2016 something to the tune of "hey that's anti semitic and dumb" on a thread that was on the front page.

I guess later that meant that masstagger flagged me as a T_D poster, so about 10% of my future posts were responded to by someone telling me I was a racist piece of shit.

I would also get mod messages once a week from subs I never post in(like 2xc) saying I was banned from their sub for participating in hate subs.

And then later my account was perma banned for no good reason at all, I'm assuming it helped that I was tagged as a T_D poster.

[iopq]

Me neither, they just banned me for posting on subs they didn't like

[shmel]

I was banned from many subs just for being subbed to the "wrong" ones. I haven't even posted there.

[babypuncher]

I'm not quite so optimistic.

The great Digg migration was something of a perfect storm. Digg shot themselves in the foot, yes, but Reddit was already up-and-coming and viewed as the most viable alternative.

There isn't really a viable alternative to Reddit yet.

[anaganisk]

Eventually if anything is popular enough it attracts, advertisers, corporations, govts, spammers, influencers and what not. It's true from Reddit, to AI and crypto. Enjoy stuff while it's new, even if all the apps reroute to a new backend, it will still be the same again. Probably not instantly but eventually.

[comte7092]

> It’s already turned into an echo-chamber of nonsense, ruled by all-powerful mods to whom every user is a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy.

I’ve literally never had this problem. And I’ve commented on a multitude of subreddits for years.

Curious to see some concrete examples where your comments were framed in this manner.

[raxxorraxor]

> It’s already turned into an echo-chamber of nonsense

It really reached an insane degree on the official subs at least. There are some karma farmers that certainly are human that post and post the ever same topics, but the quality of many submissions really dropped significantly. And I compare that to the former reddit quality, which was optimized for mass instead of quality. Today it looks like some form of propaganda spam. Perhaps a result of news outlets copying more than before.

Reddit should have build on its strengths. It was better for discussion than Twitter or Tiktok. Not too deep, but at least you could find new ideas. Now they used the platform to consolidated opinions and killed the advantages that formerly differentiated the platform.

[1270018080]

Users with this attitude all moved to Voat where they did silly transphobe nazi homophobe things. In order for a social media site to grow in quality beyond 4chan-tier users, they have to implement strong moderation. HN is doing the same thing.

[FeepingCreature]

I think this comment thread is hilarious because it's pretty much filled with two groups:

- commenters who are the problem according to the other half

- moderators who are the problem according to the other half.

[unsupp0rted]

Well summarized. And to expand, I would complain equally about moderators OR commenters for whom the answer to "this is a comment I disagree with" is "this commenter is obviously an -ist or -ic who must be banned".

[radarsat1]

I don't know about the social justice issues, but I've found that a growing problem with reddit is what I'll summarize as "the rules".

I admit I'm much more of a lurker than a contributor, but I do post things from time to time. Comments fairly frequently in technical forums, and posts much less frequently, but when they are, they are either: 1) to show a project I did, or 2) to ask a technical question.

Basically all of these use cases are more and more an exercise in frustration. I've been using the site for at least a decade, but I can't remember having so much trouble using it until quite recently. The last several posts, let's say during 2023, I've made get either manually or auto-removed. Every single subreddit no matter how small has its own, different, set of "rules" and if you don't memorize them you get your post removed. These rules are often very antisocial, in my opinion.

For example, in one forum that I read very often, I never post anything because I only like to post my own work, as I consider such work to be "original content" -- I'm not one to spend my time scouring the internet for other people's work to share, instead I like to share when I've got something to share, right? Seems natural enough to me anyway. Well, I posted a project that I spent 2 months developing, yes as part of the startup I work for but it was a for-fun April-fools type project, intended to amuse. Banned. Immediately. For "self promotion". (There were literally no ads in it or anything, just a website with a fun interaction, and the startups logo in the corner.) Thanks guys. Guess I'll take my ball and go home. Apparently they prefer reposted nonsense to original contributions? Bizarre, backwards..

Another example, someone was asking where they could go for some discussions on a certain topic, so naturally I responded to point to some other subreddits. Immediate auto-remove due to "posting links to other subreddits". Really? So, like, they have rules against hyperlinking? That thing that is at the foundation of the web?

Similarly I posted a question to a Python forum, actually quite an advanced question about an interesting phenomenon I noticed related to async generators -- auto-removed. Told to repost it in LearnPython. Great. Did so, got a bunch of beginner replies, as I expected, instead of the in-depth discussion I was hoping for.

Now, I understand that these rules and bots exist for a reason .. mainly one reason actually, which is to fight spam. But enough is enough. At what point does spam fighting become intrusive to normal, community sharing of ideas? To be honest, this has gotten me so down regarding reddit that I'm considering just not using the site any more, as it's gotten quite boring because I can barely contribute without jumping through hoops. Trying to post or share something is just depressing because either it breaks some rule, or people jump all over it with negative comments. It just doesn't feel like it's worth the effort anymore.

Does anyone else have this experience, or is it just me?

[geerlingguy]

Yeah; almost all the subreddits with more than a few thousand members have decided you can't post any links to anything of your own, labeling it self promotion. I think corporate blogspam is to blame.

But I have been soft-banned from the Raspberry Pi subreddit for years (which is rich!) for self promotion since I used to link to my blog posts about various Pi topics.

So I started doing text posts, and would have 3-5 paragraphs about the topic, then at the bottom a link for more info to my blog post. Nope, self-promotion.

I had similar issues in many other places, and in a lot of subs, even if you post a link, if you forget to also add a comment with specific points, or set flair after posting... all kinds of arcane rules, then your post will get deleted.

I haven't been banned from any sub AFAICT, but mods are swift to ban for almost any reason these days, especially for anyone who dares to challenge whatever the groupthink is (in the Apple sub, it was basically "if you dare put Apple in a bad light or question anything they do" for a time, I think I may have been banned there for posting a complaint about the Touch Bar!).

[mrguyorama]

>But I have been soft-banned from the Raspberry Pi subreddit for years (which is rich!) for self promotion since I used to link to my blog posts about various Pi topics.

"I was banned from a subreddit for self promotion since I promoted my own blog"

Like, come on man.

[mynameisvlad]

Yes, I agree, in general.

But to be completely fair to him, it's Jeff Geerling.

Being hyperbolic here, but practically all the content in the Pi (and Homelab, and several other subreddits) is either directly his or in some way derivative of his work. He has just put in that much time and effort into this space.

So the same post that got deleted would have likely been reposted, with less context, minutes later. Likely multiple times by multiple different people.

[geerlingguy]

This comes more from a background of "link-sharing sites work by people posting links with original and interesting content that a community would like."

And Reddit (and HN, and Digg, etc.) started out as link-sharing sites.

If not for "self-promotion", new blogs would never have been noticed once the era of blog rings died off and Google tried (and partially succeeded) killing RSS.

I think blatant self-promotion for selling things is wrong. But writing a blog post with information relevant to a community and sharing that seems like it's useful. If the community thinks it's spammy, then the community can flag it or downvote it.

[tylerscott]

I can confirm it is not just you. I’ve had similar experiences in other subreddits. Eventually I just stopped trying because it’s super demoralizing trying to navigate the myriad of rules in each subreddit.

[unsupp0rted]

You’re not crazy.

Others have noticed the very same effect and felt disenfranchised by it.

In some subreddits your post gets removed because the title didn’t end in a period.

It results in subreddits full of boring recycled dreck, because the smart folks take their ball and go home.

[mrguyorama]

Any subreddit that gets on "/all" regularly is owned by a few megamods, and their point is to make reddit money with advertising, not to be a useful community.

Even if they wanted to actually be a useful community, the tools mods get on reddit are woefully unfit for purpose for communities of millions of people. You cannot have a public forum with that many people. The human brain is just not built for it. Perfect moderation is impossible

[castillar76]

I’ve had similar experiences in other subreddits, yep. Not so much things being removed, though. Instead I ask nicely for help with learning something and get fried with “you’re doing this all wrong, lrn2notsuck noob” responses, or I spend a good chunk of time on a thoughtful response to a question and it gets no votes or responses at all.

Some subreddits are notable exceptions, though—-those are the ones I’ll actually miss if this thing collapses. By and large, they’re small, very focused subreddits on particular topics; seems like once a subreddit reaches a certain size it just collapses into the above mess of behaviors.

[carlosjobim]

Isn't that the old Linux joke? Ask nicely for help with Linux and people will tell you to go pound sand. Instead say "Linux sucks because it can't do this..." and tons of people will show up saying "No, you are wrong! Linux can do it, you just need to..."

[kaetemi]

Boards that have rules against self-promotion are a sign that they're centered around one or a group of influencers, or that the board intends to promote whoever is running it, rather than being a real social community with mutual interests where people actually learn to know one another.

[johnny22]

huh? got an example? I've been to quite a few topical FOSS oriented subs and i'm happy for the no self-promotion rules.

It's usually a bunch of people making an inferior version of neofetch or whatever basic tool is well known to the community.

[myko]

> all-powerful mods to whom every user is a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy.

Weird, I've been put off of reddit because of the prevalence of transphobes, homophobes, and racists who inundate so many threads. I wish there were better mods to remove those folks from the site.

[nailer]

Do you feel that people outside Reddit are often racist and transphobic?

[myko]

No

[jonny_eh]

If people keep telling you that you're racist then maybe you're…

[unsupp0rted]

...commenting innocuously on a massive social network among college-age North American kids in 2023

[jonny_eh]

Reddit mods aren't predominately NA college kids.

[Affric]

> In a few years nobody will remember that this is what precipitated the fall of Reddit. It’s already turned into an echo-chamber of nonsense, ruled by all-powerful mods to whom every user is a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy.

I have always been pretty left wing (have been a member of and organised for a range of left wing political parties) but Reddit was what very much moderated by belief in 99% of left wing politicians and would be politicians. If the kinds who rise to the top of subreddits ever saw power in our societies we would see the terror and widespread violence. There's a performative aesthetic idea of what being left wing is based on positions on issues, knowledge, rather than an actual mindset and series of real beliefs about what is the right thing to do.

It comes down to what I had always seen as the territory of the right but now realise that people of any political persuasion can do it:

1. Blame the system for your own problems

2. Other your enemies and make their problems personal failings

3. Claim that justice would be their destruction rather than their rehabilitation

And for social media companies these lonely, angry, miserable people drive huge amounts of engagement.

Reddit has huge governance issues as a community that stems from the fact that the corporate leadership cannot serve two masters. In retrospect when they did the big slow down on the "hot" algorithm was the moment it could not be saved.

[glonq]

I almost agree. Some subreddits are echo chambers of woke nonsense. Others are echo chambers of different nonsense. Others seem mostly fine.

It's less about the wokeness and more about the ability for a handful of mods to hijack popular topics and create an unecessarily unpleasant/unproductive experience for their communities.

I'll leave ineffective admins, lack of original content, spam, karma, bots, misinformation, automod, and monetization as separate points of discussion :P

[Takennickname]

You comment is flagged. Guess the mods here are no different lol.

Anyway, for me, "Narwhal baconed at midnight" was when I realized the site was overrun was kids. Slow decline while obsessively looking for alternatives since then.

[mort96]

I mean the racist transphobe nazi homophobes is probably the group I'm the most happy are getting banned... There are so many examples of mods power tripping, and you chose to use the banning of nazis as your example?

[bigbillheck]

> I miss the Reddit that was good.

Reddit was never good.

[swalsh]

Was it the V4 rollout where basically every link came from MrBabyMan?

[godzillabrennus]

Yes. Here is more info from Wikipedia:

Digg's v4 release on August 25, 2010, was marred by site-wide bugs and glitches. Digg users reacted with hostile verbal opposition. Beyond the release, Digg faced problems due to so-called "power users" who would manipulate the article recommendation features to only support one another's postings, flooding the site with articles only from these users and making it impossible to have genuine content from non-power users appear on the front page.[citation needed] Frustrations with the system led to dwindling web traffic, exacerbated by heavy competition from Facebook, whose like buttons started to appear on websites next to Digg's.[19] High staff turnover included the departure of head of business development Matt Van Horn, shortly after v4's release.[20]

[bacchusracine]

>Digg faced problems due to so-called "power users" who would manipulate the article recommendation features to only support one another's postings, flooding the site with articles only from these users and making it impossible to have genuine content from non-power users appear on the front page

So familiar....

[kolanos]

I remember Kevin Rose talking about the impending V4 and being struck by how obsessed he was with Digg doing every popular web trend at the time. He was particularly focused on everything Facebook did to the point where Digg aesthetically started to even look like Facebook. It seemed like Digg had all but abandoned what made it great in pursuit of copying others. Maybe this was VC pressure, who knows.

[Dwedit]

All I remember was seeing some really stale stuff on the front page of Digg, making me look for an alternative.